I assume Louis Armstrong wasn’t talking about writing female characters when he said the quote above, but it seems apt, given an interview Neil Gaiman recently gave to BBC Radio. The main point of what Gaiman is trying to say is that there it is easy to get all snarled up in the “strong female character” thing and focus on creating characters who are simply good at kicking ass. But to me the shocking thing is Alderman’s quote in the excerpt there. He seems to want some sort of magic rule to fix all these authors who can’t write good female characters, but he doesn’t seem to realize that Gaiman just gave it to him – women, as it turns out, are people.